While the flood waters at NP Dodge Park have receded and the public is now allowed to come back in, there is still plenty of work left to do before the park gets back to the way it was.
"There's some more debris down here, I'm kind of surprised there's this much dead grass down here, a lot of it looks like it flooded out and killed with just the moisture itself. It had a hard time coming back from the last flood and they have to kinda redo it again," George Schluter, who walks his dog most days at NP Dodge Park.
Schluter said he had to change his plans and head to Hummel Park after Missouri River floodwaters overtook the park in late June.
This has happened before, including in 2011 when the park was shut down for two years before it opened back up.
"The people down here had worked really hard to get it back up to the level that it had gotten to before this came along from the previous damage."
Omaha Parks Maintenance manager Josh Frey says they lost three big trees from the recent flooding, but staff believes the rest of the trees will hold up.
Crews will also have to re-seed much of the turfgrass that died, he says that will be done in the fall.
Gale Huggins still thought the park was closed this morning when he attempted to fish at a spot near the airport.
"I tried there but I couldn't find it and I thought I'd come here and see, just take a chance to see if it was open yet. To my surprise I'm glad to see it's open, I've been waiting to get out here," says Huggins.
The parks department wasted no time in trying to get NP Dodge Park back up to par. As soon as it opened here today you could see maintenance crews already beginning to clean it up.
